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Insider attacks and industrial espionage could become more stealthy by hiding malicious code in the core system functions available in a motherboard's flash memory, researchers said on Wednesday at the Black Hat Federal conference.

A collection of functions for power management, known as the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), has its own high-level interpreted language that could be used to code a rootkit and store key attack functions in the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) in flash memory, according to John Heasman, principal security consultant for UK based Next-Generation Security Software.

"Rootkits are becoming more of a threat in general- BIOS is just the next step," Heasman said during a presentation at the conference. "While this is not a threat now, it is a warning to people to look out."

While some attacks have attempted to affect a computer's flash memory, most notably the CIH or Chernobyl virus in 1998, the ability to use the high-level programming language available for creating ACPI functions has opened up the attack to far more programmers.

One rootkit expert at the conference predicted that the technology will become a fundamental part of rootkits in the near future.

"It is going to be about one month before malware comes out to take advantage of this," said Greg Hoglund, a rootkit expert and CEO of reverse engineering firm HBGary. "This is so easy to do. You have widely available tools, free compilers for the ACPI language, and high-level languages to write the code in."

The firmware on most modern motherboards has tables associating commands in the ACPI Machine Language (AML) to hardware commands. New functionality can be programmed in a higher level ACPI Source Language (ASL) and compiled into machine language and then flashed into the tables.

However, the ability to flash the memory depends on whether the motherboard allows the BIOS to be changed by default or if a jumper or setting in the machine setup program has to be changed. Security professionals at the conference disagreed over how many machines would have the ability to write to flash memory turned on by the manufacturer. While Hoglund believed that most computers would not have protections against writing to flash memory turned on by default, NGSSoftware's Heasman thought otherwise.

"The obstacles to deployment are numerous," Heasman said. "Almost all machines have a physical protection, such as a jumper on the motherboard, against flashing."

However, an insider attacker could flash their laptop before they leave a company and then use the rootkit, which would survive reinstallation of the operating system. The insider could then gain access to the corporate network at a later time.

Because the amount of memory that could be used by an attacker in the BIOS firmware is small, it is unlikely that an entire rootkit will be stored in the motherboard's memory. Instead, only specific functions and bootstrap code would likely be hidden there.

Another benefit of programming to the ACPI Source Language is that, for the most part, the code can be ported easily to any platform.

"This is platform independent," Heasman said. "We can write a backdoor for Windows that will elevate privilege, and turn around and use the code on Windows."